Professor Walter Lyon Blease

Professor Walter Lyon Blease

Professor Walter Lyon Blease (1884-1963) was the Queen Victoria Chair of Law at the University of Liverpool for thirty years between 1919 and 1949. He also held a number of other University of Liverpool posts, including that of Public Orator from 1931 to 1949 and Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1919-1925 and again from 1942 until 1945. Blease was a man of “eloquence and charm”[i] as well as wide academic and political interests. Here, we consider his full and varied life.

Early Life and Education

Walter Lyon Blease was born on the 30th May 1884 at 5 Beech Street, Fairfield, Liverpool (now part of the Beech Mount Hotel). His mother was Mary Cecilia, nee Harvey/Lyon (died 1936). She was a Presbyterian who practiced temperance and who spent her time, amongst other things, as a poor law guardian. Lyon Blease’s father was Walter Blease (1853-1940), a Baptist who was a successful chartered accountant whose income provided for a comfortable family home in which the young Lyon Blease grew up. The Blease accountancy practice, Blease & Sons, was a family affair being created and run by Walter Blease and his brother.[ii] Walter Blease also sat as a magistrate of the City of Liverpool.

Lyon Blease attended a number of schools as a youth. In keeping with his Presbyterian roots, Blease was first educated at Parkfield School, Liverpool, from 1891 to 1899. He then went to Sedbergh School. Unfortunately, he received a knee injury which caused him to leave the school. He then went to Shrewsbury School between 1900 and 1902, where he was an able student, becoming prefect and head of house but known for being “principled and prudish”[iii] Blease left the school with his father’s agreement.

Lyon Blease then read for his law degree at the University of Liverpool and also for the Bar. He graduated with an LL.B. in 1906 and with an LL.M. in 1908. He was admitted as a Bar student by Lincoln’s Inn with a studentship on the 27th June 1906. He was called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn on the 25th February 1907, being proposed by Master Mellor KC. Lyon Blease commenced his practice on the Northern Circuit in Liverpool specialising in chancery work with his first chambers at 13 Harrington Street where he remained from 1906 to 1911. He then moved to 2 Harrington Street from 1912 to 1925. Lyon Blease then moved to 26 North John Street where he was located from 1925 until 1928. His penultimate move was then to 3 Cook Street, where he stayed from 1929 until 1958. Finally, he moved to 14 Water Street, where he was able to practice in limited form from 1959 to 1963. This meant Lyon Blease practiced from no less than five different addresses in Liverpool during the course of his career at the Bar.

Political Ambition

Lyon Blease contested the Chorley division for the Liberals in the January 1910 General Election. He was not successful. Temperance, state welfare provision, and free trade formed part of his Liberal causes on the election trail. He had been the president of the Liverpool committee of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage from 1908. Lyon Blease would stand again for the Liberals in the 1945 (East Toxteth) and 1950 (Garston) General Elections. He was also unsuccessful on both occasions.

During the First World War Lyon, Blease served with the Red Cross at hospital units as a gentleman orderly. At the outbreak of the war he was thirty years old. The hospital units were based in Serbia (1915), Russia and Romania (1916-1918).  Lyon Blease met his wife, Harriot Davies (1884)-1972) whilst serving in Serbia. Harriet was a nurse. The couple also travelled as far as Japan, where they married in Tokyo in 1918. Lyon Blease worked as an assistant editor of the New East. His wife typed up the manuscript of his biography of Suvorof (see below). The couple stayed there for a year. Together the couple had three daughters.

Lyon at Liverpool

In addition to his work in practice as a chancery barrister, Lyon Blease joined the Faculty of Law as a Lecturer in the Law and Custom of the English Constitution. He held this post between 1910 and 1915.

As we have seen, Lyon Blease was appointed the Queen Victoria Professor of Law in 1919.[iv] He held the post for some thirty years until 1949. This is the longest tenure of any academic as the Queen Victoria chair to date.

Lyon Blease undertook a number of additional roles whilst Queen Victoria Professor of Law. He was also the Dean of the Faculty of Law for two separate periods. His first period as Dean was between 1919 and 1925. His second term of office was from 1942 until 1945. Both periods were touched by issues emanating from wars. As Dean from 1919, Lyon Blease was dealing with relatively low recruitment. This was a pattern which continued in his second period as Dean from 1942. War simply diverted applicants from reading law towards the war effort.

Lyon Blease was also Public Orator of the University from 1931, the 50th anniversary of the University’s foundation, until 1949.

Whilst at the University of Liverpool, Lyon Blease vigorously opposed the University’s ban of married women staff.

Written Work

Lyon Blease’s ODNB biographer notes that he was “More drawn to politics and letters than the law.”[v] Whilst his professional career at the bar and in a Law Faculty as a law teacher does not quite bear this out, Lyon Blease’s written work perhaps does. Lyon Blease published across a range of topics.

His first monograph was his 1910 work entitled “The Emancipation of English Women.”[vi] During this period, he also frequently gave public talks up and down the country in support of the suffragette movement. Lyon Blease joined the Faculty of Law as a lecturer in 1910 and was appointed to the Queen Victoria Chair in Law in 1919. The monograph and speeches may have helped to encourage applications from prospective female undergraduate students to Liverpool’s Faculty of Law. The book was dedicated to his mother, Mary Ceilia Blease, to his friend Mary Adelaide Broadhurst and to his ‘critic’ Margaret Milne Farquharson. Stretching over some two hundred and seventy-nine pages the book ranges from emancipation from the restoration through to 1750 and right up to woman suffrage from 1906.

In 1912 Lyon Blease published “The Poor Law and Parochial Government in Liverpool. 1681-1834”.[vii] This was followed in 1913 by Lyon Blease’s “A Short History of English Liberalism.”[viii]

Lyon Blease followed this with his 1920 biographical work on the Russian General Suvorof.[ix] This three hundred and sixty-page biography is an interesting yet curious book, not least because of its extremely apologetic foreword citing its “many deficiencies”.[x] The work seems to have been researched whilst Lyon Blease was serving during the First World War. His wife typed the manuscript up whilst they were in Tokyo, Japan, as newlyweds. The work is culled from secondary sources, as Lyon Blease makes clear in his introduction. The work contains an introduction by Major-General Sir CE Callwell, KCB.

Lyon Blease also wrote a practitioner’s text on conveyancing which was published just after the great property legislation of 1925 was enacted.  The book, An Introduction to the Law of Real Property, was published in its third edition by Sweet & Maxwell in 1926.[xi]  Law articles included a piece on the relationship between law and medicine.[xii]

Extra-Curricular Work

Lyon Blease was involved in a number of civic activities during his later life. He was chairman of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society and the Merseyside Film Institute Society. Lynch also states that Lyon Blease was the governor of the British Film Institute in 1936.[xiii]  He was also on the Liverpool executive council of the National Health Service from 1952 to 1960. Lyon Blease was a keen bibliophile, engraver, furniture carver, and international traveller. He came to national prominence as a contestant on the BBC’s Round Britain Quiz.

Likeness & Book Bequest

We are told by his nephew, His Honour Judge Scarlett, that Lyon Blease was “tall, gangly, and very recognisable.”[xiv] In terms of likenesses there are at least three portraits of Lyon Blease.

A 1947 portrait measuring 61cm by 51 cm and entitled “Professor W. Lyon Blease (1884–1963)” was produced by the artist George Herbert Buckingham Holland (1901–1987). The portrait currently resides in Kettering, Northampton, in the Alfred East Art Gallery.

An undated portrait measuring 82cm by 61.5cm by an unknown artist entitled “Professor William Lyon Blease (1884-1963)” was gifted to the Victoria Gallery & Museum by Mrs J. MacLachlan, the daughter of the sitter, in 2001.

Part of Lyon Blease’s book collection was donated to the University of Liverpool in 2000 by his daughter, Mrs Jane MacLachlan.[xv] The gift includes over one hundred and fifty private press books. These include the five-volume Doves Press Bible of 1903-05, thirty-one titles from the Golden Cockerel Press, twenty-one Nonesuch Press titles, and examples from the Gregynog, Shakespeare Head, Chiswick, Argonaut, Cupid and Rodale Presses.[xvi]

Towards the end of his life, Lyon Blease lived at 12 Eaton Road, Cressington Park, Liverpool.

Lyon Blease died at home of a coronary thrombosis on the 12th April 1963.  He was 79 years old.

Author: Dr John Tribe (September 2023)

References

[i] See further: Pedersen, J.  (2004, September 23). Blease, (Walter) Lyon (1884–1963), barrister and civic activist. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Hereafter: Pederson. See also: A. Allan, ‘Biographical note and guide to W. Lyon Blease papers’,  University of Liverpool, Liverpool.

[ii] See also: HHJ Scarlett. Professor Lyon Blease, in: Fagan, N & Bryson, G & Elston, C (Eds). A Century of Liverpool Lawyers. Liverpool Law Society, Liverpool. 2002, pp.93, 94. Hereafter Scarlett.

[iii] Pederson.

[iv] See University of Liverpool Archives & Records: REF: P6A/2/1 - Queen Victoria Chair of Law - n.d. [1919] Copy of report of the Committee recommending the appointment of Mr. W. Lyon Blease to the Queen Victoria Chair of Law, n.d. [1919]. See also: University of Liverpool Archives & Records: REF: D55 - Blease, Professor Walter Lyon - 1883 – 1964 These papers reflect his work in many spheres, during the 1st World War, at the University (as teacher and counsellor, as Public Orator 1931-49), in Liverpool and Lancashire (as barrister, patron of the arts, as unsuccessful Liberal candidate in Parliamentary elections in 1910, 1945, and 1950, as reviewer of books on history etc), and nationally (as broadcaster, campaigner for various liberal causes, and author of several books).

[v] Pederson.

[vi] Lyon Blease, W. The Emancipation of English Women. Constable & Company Ltd, London, 1910.

[vii] Lyon Blease, W. The Poor Law and Parochial Government in Liverpool. 1681-1834. 1912.

[viii] Lyon Blease, W. A Short History of English Liberalism. Short history of English Liberalism. T. F. Unwin, 1913.

[ix] Lyon Blease, W. Suvorof. Constable & Company Ltd, London, 1920.

[x] Lyon Blease, W. Suvorof. Constable & Company Ltd, London, 1920, p.vii. Lyon Blease notes that, “I was unable to spend any time in the Imperial Library…where a large number of papers on Suvorof had been deposited.” Lyon Blease also lost his library on Suvorof due to his work movements.

[xi] Lyon Blease, W. An Introduction to the Law of Real Property. 3rd Ed. Sweet & Maxwell, London, 1926.

[xii] Lyon Blease, W. The Relations Between Law and Medicine [1962] International Journal of Clinical Practice, Volume 16, Issue 12Dec, pp.761-823.

[xiii] Judge David Lynch. Northern Circuit – Directory 1876-2004. The Bluecoat Press, Liverpool, 2005, p.201.

[xiv] Scarlett, p.94.

[xv] See further: SPEC Blease 127, Special Collections and Archives, University of Liverpool, https://libguides.liverpool.ac.uk/library/sca/walterlyonblease

[xvi] A further two hundred and fifty-five books that were collected by Lyon Blease can be viewed on the catalogue of the Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada - https://www.lib.sfu.ca/

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